1. Field of the invention
This invention relates to an autostereoscopic display device for use in television, computer graphics, and the like viewing applications.
2. Prior Art
My prior U.S. Pat. No. 4,717,949 describes an autostereoscopic display that uses stationary light emitting lines in combination with an image displaying light valve to produce stereoscopic images that can be seen without the use of glasses by the observer. That display can be used either to produce a stereoscopic pair of images that can be seen only from a narrow vertical area situated directly in front of the screen, or a number of different images with different perspectives, that can be seen from a wide angles in front of the screen, and can give a hologram-like look around capability to the observer. Unfortunately, when used in the latter mode, and given a light valve with a certain number of pixels, the number of emitting lines must be reduced, so that several columns of pixels are situated in front of each line, each column displaying part of a perspective view appropriate to some zone in front of the device. This results in a loss of resolution by a factor f equal to the number of viewing zones that the display produces.
My still earlier U.S. Pat. No. 4,367,486 describes a system using a single, moving light emitting point in combination with an image producing light valve to produce a hologram like image with a large number of zones. This display device does not suffer from the trade off between number of zones and resolution that the device of U.S. Pat. No. 4,717,949 would. It would take full advantage of the resolution of the light valve when producing 3-D images. However, a device having high resolution would have to operate at the extremely high data transfer rates and employ a light valve with an extremely high frame rate in order to produce images. A high resolution device of this type would thus be very difficult and costly to build using today's technology.
Unfortunately the devices of each patent, U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,717,949 and 4,367,486, lack features which are deemed desirable by current technology.
Accordingly it is an object of this invention to provide a device capable of displaying three dimensional images that can be viewed with appropriate perspective from several locations in front of the device.
It is a further object of this invention to provide a thin, compact, and lightweight display capable of producing three dimensional images.
It is still a further an object of this invention to provide a display that is capable of taking full advantage of the resolution of a light valve array when producing three dimensional images.
It is yet another object of this invention to supply a display that can display images in such a manner that a large number of people sitting at various places in front of it can all see the images.
Yet still another object of this invention is to provide means of increasing the resolution of a transmissive display without increasing the number of pixels on the display.
Still other objects will be apparent to those skilled in the art upon reference to the following detailed description.